Drum pallet

ABSTRACT

A drum pallet, such as of steel, includes a shallow metal rectangular base or base portion, a loop of metal receptive in the bottom rim of a drum, such loop being secured to the upper side of said base and overhanging the longer sides thereof, there being one to four such loops on each base, a set of cleats on the bottom of the base receptive of the top rim or rims of another drum or drums on which the pallet is stacked, such structure enabling the use of a hand truck to load a filled drum directly onto the pallet.

Unlted States Patent 1 1 3,834,323

Weinmann Sept. 10, 1974 1 1 DRUM PALLET 3,472,363 10/1969 Rustin, Jr. eta1. 108/55 1 3,476,260 11/1969 J 108/53 X [75] Invent wemmann Lake C1133,563,184 2/1972 Angelbeck, .lr.... 108/53 3,710,732 1/1973 Phelps108/51 [73] Assignee: Valley Craft Products, Inc., Lake FOREIGN PATENTSOR APPLICATIONS Filed: p 15, 1972 473,867 Great Britain 248/146 [21]Appl. No.: 289,448

Primary Examiner-Paul H. Gilliam [52] [1.8. Ci. 108/51 AssistantExaminer-G, O. Finch [51] Int. Cl 865d 19/00 Attorney, Agent, orFirm-Hill, Gross, Simpson, Van [58] Field of Search 108/5 15 8; Santen,Steadman, Chiara & Simpson 248/346, 175, 117.2, 117.6, 127-146; 220/97B, 69; 217/43 A; 211/71; 214/105, 621 [57] ABSTRACT v [56] Referen Cit dA drum pallet, such as of steel, includes a shallow UNITED STATESPATENTS metal rectangular base or base portion, a loop of metalreceptive in the bottom rim of a drum, such Lapham loo bein secured tothe u er side of Said base and 2,803,363 8/1957 l-lutchinson.... 108/55x P PP 3 147 860 9/1964 Kean Sr et al 10853 X overhanglng the longersides thereof, there bemg one 3157423 1111964 Brie, sr.. I: $1....108/56 four Such lOOPS on each base, a of cleats the 3:232:441 2/1966Mitscherling 248/DIG. 7 bottom of the base receptive 0f the top rim Irim of 3,285,204 11/1966 Schweitzer, .lr 108/55 another drum or drums onwhich the pallet is stacked, 3,308,771 3/ 1967 Wettlen 108/51 suchstructure enabling the use of a hand truck to load 3,431,870 3/1969Naylor et a1 108/55 3, filled drum directly onto the pallet. 3,471,11310/1969 Fahey 248/346 8 Claims, 9 Drawing Figures PAIENImsEPmlsu v sum 1or was PAIENIE SEP 1 0 tan DRUM PALLET BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Thisinvention pertains to a drum pallet, and more specifically to a metaldrum pallet that can be directly loaded and unloaded by means of a handtruck.

PRIOR ART The most common type of pallet used with steel drums areconventional wooden pallets. It is relatively difficult to load such apallet with a hand truck because of the height of the pallet. Further,there is no structure on the pallet which would keep a drum fromshifting on the pallet while-the same was being transported'in arailroad car or truck. Such wooden pallets have relatively short lifeand are relatively bulky on a return trip and during storage.

US Pat. No. 3,521,777 discloses a pallet for a drum, but the same isrelatively expensive in that the tooling needed to produce the samewould cost thousands of dollars. Moreover, the fingers of a forklifttruck could pick up two such loaded pallets and thus pick up twobarrels, but assuming conventional 55 gallon barrels, loads of fourbarrels could not be lifted. Further, a pallet such as this isvdifficult to load.

It has been found that users having known types of drum pallets havefound them to be unsatisfactory since a filled drum typically has agross weight of 550 to over 800 pounds each, and unless the drum wereresting on a pallet before the drum was filled, some kind of crane orother lifting device was necessary in order to get the barrel on thepallet in the first place. In no event could a filled barrel be loadedonto a known drum pallet using only a hand truck of the typed used fordrums, and such potential use required the supplemental use of someother lifting device to get the barrel on the pallet in the first placeafter a hand truck had brought the same to the vicinity of the pallet orvice versa. I

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention is directed .to a drumpallet that can be directly loaded with filled barrels by use of a handtruck of a type normally used for handling filled drums, such palletincluding a rectangular base, and a loop of metal secured to the upperside of such base,

the loop overhanging the longer sides thereof, there being from one tofour such loops on a particular base.

Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide animproved drum pallet.

A further object of the present invention is to provide a drum palletthat can be directly loaded by a hand Many other advantages, featuresand additional objects of the present invention will become manifest tothose versed in the art upon making reference to the detaileddescription and the accompanying sheets of drawings in which preferredstructural embodiments incorporating the principles of the presentinvention are shown by way of-illustrative example.

ON THE DRAWINGS FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a drum pallet providedin accordance with the principles of the present invention;

FIG; 2 is a perspective view of a modification of the pallet of FIG. 1for handling two drums;

.FIG. 3 is a modification of the pallet of FIG. 1 for handling threedrums;

FIG. 4 is a further modification of the pallet of FIG. 1 for handlingfour drums;

FIG. 5 illustrates the loading of a pallet of FIG. 4 with a hand truckof the drum type;

FIG. 6 is a top diagrammatic view of a number of drums disposed forshipment or storage on pallets according to FIG. 4;

FIGS. 7 and 8 are top diagrammatic views of a number of drums disposedon pallets in accordance with FIG. 3 for storage or shipment, FIG. 8representing the manner of loading in a truck; and

FIG. 9 is a top diagrammatic view of a number of drums disposed-forshipment in a truck on a further modification of the pallet which is ahybrid of thepallets of FIGS. 3 and 4. 1

AS SHOWN ON THE DRAWINGS The principles of the present invention areparticularly useful when embodied in a drum pallet such as illustratedin FIG. 1 generally indicated by the numeral 10. The pallet 10 has arectangular metal base 11 comprising four elongated members 12-15 whichjointly define a rectangular opening 16a. Two of the members 12, 13 arelonger than the other two members 14, 15. The longer members 12, 13 inthis embodiment comprise tubing of rectangular cross section disposed onedge and the shorter members 14, 15 comprise similar tubing arranged ina flat manner and secured near the upper surface of the longer members12, 13 as by welding. The vertical height of the longer members 12, 13typically is 2/2 inches and is sufficient to provide a space receptiveof the fork of a forklift truck (not shown). The position of the shortermembers 14, 15 thus provides a space whereby the base 11 is adapted toreceive such lift fork,

Secured to the upper side 16 of the metal base 11 is a loop 17 of metalwhich has multilateral straight sides 18, 18 of equal length, a squareconfiguration being preferable and preferably being provided withrounded corners 19 as shown. The loop 17 is so disposed that its sides18 are disposed at an angle with respect to the elongated members 12-15which is substantially 45 de- 13. The loop 17 is secured to each of themembers l2-15 at points where the configurations intersect or touch, andthe sides 18 of the loop 17 span the opening 16a at each of its corners.Each side 18 is also a stiffenstruction of the base 11.

To the lower side of the base 11, at each comer, there is secured acleat 20 which cleats jointly define a recess that receives the top rimof another drum upon which the pallet may be stacked.

In FIG. 2 there is shown a pallet 22 that accommodates two drums, inFIG. 3 there is shown a pallet 23 that accommodates three drums, and inFIGS. 4 and 9 there are shown pallets 24 and 32 which accommodate fourdrums. There is a loop 17 provided on the upper side of each base of thepallets 22-24, 32 for each drum that is to be accommodated. Byincreasing the number of drums on a pallet, certain efficiencies areachieved. It is no more work to operate a forklift truck for a pluralityof drums than it is for a single drum. Also, the rectangular baseportion provided for each drum is constructed so that certain of theelongated members of the base are common to more than one rectangularbase portion or opening. In these embodiments, each base is arectangular portion of a unified base structure.

With reference to FIG. 2, the longer elongated members meet and are hereconstructed as a single tubular member 25 preferably having a cleat 20at each end to prevent sagging, there being also four cleats 20, one ateach corner. The center-to-center spacing between the loops 17 is thesame as though two of the pallets 10 having drums thereon were placedtogether with the drums substantially touching. A forklift truck canpick up two of the pallets 22 at the same time, thereby handling fourdrums.

The pallet 24 of FIG. 4 is a structure which is a unification of two ofthe pallets 22 of FIGS. 2, and to that end, the common elongated member25 of FIG. 2 is made twice as long as shown at 26 and the other tubularmembers are correspondingly elongated-In addition, the elongated membersthat define the shorter ends of the rectangular openings are constructedas one common elongated member 27, having separate sections.

As shown in FIG. 5, a hand truck 28 is provided with shoes 29 which cometo rest on the upper corner surfaces 30 of the rectangular base or baseportion, surfaces 30 being those that project from the space occupied bythe drum or to be occupied by the drum, thus enabling the hand truckoperator to deposit the drum directly onto the pallet or to pick it updirectly from the pallet for any of the embodiments disclosed herein.Once a pallet is fully loaded, such as the pallet 24, a forklift truckcan dispose the loaded pallets in a trucktrailer, freight car orwarehouse with an arrangement such as that shown in FIG. 6 and can stackadditional palletized drums on the top thereof. Note that it is the drumdimensions and not the pallet dimensions that determine how closely thedrums can be stacked, and therefore storage space is utilizedefficiently.

To obtain an even greater efficiency in the use of storage space, suchas shown diagrammatically in FIGS. 7-9, the pallet 23 of FIG. 3 or thepallet 32 of FIG. 9 is utilized. The construction of the pallet 23 isquite similar to the taking of three of the pallets 10 and arrangingthem as shown, utilizing one common member 31 where the short ends oftwo of the rectangular openings meet, the elongated members of thelonger sides being secured to the longer side of a third rectangularbase portion. The center of the loop 17a is aligned with the short endsof common member 31. With this arrangement, three barrels are handled bythe forklift truck at a time, and the horizontal efficiency of ahoneycomb is approached so that an even larger number of drums may bestored in a given storage or shipping space. The construction of thefour drum pallet of FIG. 9 is like that of FIG. 3 except that the singlepallet portion is replaced with a double pallet portion like that shownin the left half of FIG. 3.

To arrange the pallets as shown in FIG. 7, there is needed a relativelylarge maneuvering space for the forklift truck because certain of thepallets, for instance the one in the upper righthand comer of thedrawing, need to be skidded laterally, which may be inconvenient.

It is therefore more preferable to arrange the pallets 23 as shown inFIG. 8. In this view, interior side walls of a truck are showndiagrammatically at 34,35. Where the side walls 34,35 are 94 inchesapart, there will be a clearance space between the lines 36,37 of 6inches where the distance between the lines 34 and 36 and the distancebetween the lines 35 and 37 is 44 inches. The first pallet 23 isdeposited as shown, and the next one can be placed at the end of thefirst one directly by the forklift truck. The truck can also directlyplace a pallet at the opposite side of the 6 inch aisle.

The four drum pallets 32 are loaded as shown in FIG. 9 and achieve thesame space efficiency as the arrangement of FIG. 8.

The pallet in its various embodiments of this invention is readilyloaded directly by a hand truck onto a selected pallet which issoconstructed that the pallet keeps the drum from shifting thereon duringshipment. The construction of the pallet gives it a long life, and alsogives it a minimum bulk during empty return and empty storage. Up tofour drums can be handled at one time by equipment now in use inindustry. Further, the present invention can be constructed withoutspecial tooling, utilizing only cutoff, bending and welding equipment ofgeneraly utility. Yet an extremely heavy filled barrel can be unloadedor loaded directly from the drum pallet without need for an additionallifting device.

Because of its open construction, a pallet constructed in accordancewith this invention can be used to support a barrel or drum as agravity-type of dispensing device.

The present invention speeds drum handling and also prevents accidentswhile facilitating stacking, all in an efficient manner. A forklifttruck of adequate capacity can pick up and transport as many as eightdrums at one time, stacked two high, for rapid loading and unloading oftrailers or freight cars. As the overall width of the four drum pallet24 is less than the diameter of two drums, it is possible to place twoloaded pallets side by side in a truck-trailer body of conventionalwidth. The overall strength of this pallet construction allows heavymultiple stacking without danger of accidental tipping. The low profileremoves a danger prevelant when loading drums on standard woodenpallets. The loops l7 and the cleats 20 prevent the drum from slippingoff the pallet or vice versa during transport. The staggeredconstruction of the pallets 23 and 32 permits a maximum number of drumsto be placed side by side. The longer elongated members in each of theembodiments when drums are stacked provide an even weight distributionto the lower drums.

Although various minor modifications might be suggested by those versedin the art, it should be understood that I wish to embody within thescope of the patent warranted hereon, all such embodiments as reasonablyand properly come within the scope of my contribution to the art.

I claim as my invention:

1. A drum pallet for a drum having a bottom rim, comprising:

a. a rectangular metal base having an upper side for supporting the drumand said base being adapted to be lifted by a fork truck; and

b. a continuous fixed loop of metal secured to said upper side of saidbase and axially receivable inside the bottom rim of the drum, saidloop, within the rim, overhanging at least one of the longer sides ofsaid rectangular base.

2. A drum pallet according to claim 1 in which it is one of said cornersof said loop which overhangs said longer one of said sides of saidrectangular base.

3. A drum pallet according to claim 1 including at least two of saidloops of metal, receivable within a corresponding number of drums, andall secured to said upper side of said rectangular base.

4. A drum pallet according to claim 3 in which said base compriseselongated members joined together and jointly defining at least tworectangular openings, each respectively underlying one of said loops,certain of said elongated members being common to more than one of saidrectangular openings.

5. A drum pallet according to claim 1 including four cleats secured tothe lower surface of said base, one at each corner, and so sized andplaced in relation to said loop as to jointly define a recess receptiveof the upper rim of another corresponding axially aligned drum.

6. A drum pallet according to claim 3 including at least four cleatssecured to the lower surface of said base, and so sized and placed inrelation to said loops as to jointly define a recess receptive of theupper rim of a corresponding number of additional corresponding axiallyaligned drums.

7. A drum pallet according to claim 1 in which said loop has a squareform with rounded corners.

8. A drum pallet according to claim 1 in which said base comprises fourelongated members joined together and jointly defining a rectangularopening, said loop being secured to each of said four elongated membersand spanning a portion of said opening at each of the four corners ofsaid opening.

1. A drum pallet for a drum having a bottom rim, comprising: a. arectangular metal base having an upper side for supporting the drum andsaid base being adapted to be lifted by a fork truck; and b. acontinuous fixed loop of metal secured to said upper side of said baseand axially receivable inside the bottom rim of the drum, said loop,within the rim, overhanging at least one of the longer sides of saidrectangular base.
 2. A drum pallet according to claim 1 in which it isone of said corners of said loop which overhangs said longer one of saidsides of said rectangular base.
 3. A drum pallet according to claim 1including at least two of said loops of metal, receivable within acorresponding number of drums, and all secured to said upper side ofsaid rectangular base.
 4. A drum pallet according to claim 3 in whichsaid base comprises elongated members joined together and jointlydefining at least two rectangular openings, each respectively underlyingone of said loops, certain of said elongated members being common tomore thAn one of said rectangular openings.
 5. A drum pallet accordingto claim 1 including four cleats secured to the lower surface of saidbase, one at each corner, and so sized and placed in relation to saidloop as to jointly define a recess receptive of the upper rim of anothercorresponding axially aligned drum.
 6. A drum pallet according to claim3 including at least four cleats secured to the lower surface of saidbase, and so sized and placed in relation to said loops as to jointlydefine a recess receptive of the upper rim of a corresponding number ofadditional corresponding axially aligned drums.
 7. A drum palletaccording to claim 1 in which said loop has a square form with roundedcorners.
 8. A drum pallet according to claim 1 in which said basecomprises four elongated members joined together and jointly defining arectangular opening, said loop being secured to each of said fourelongated members and spanning a portion of said opening at each of thefour corners of said opening.